Pressure gauges enjoy very extensive commercial and industrial use and are consequently regarded as high production items. Because of such wide use, they are supplied by a plurality of manufacturers and sold in very price conscious competition. Each manufacturer instinctively strives to reduce product costs by improvements, however marginal, which reduce labor and/or materials that can contribute to cost savings in the end product.
In most conventional gauge constructions, each of the individual gauge components such as the socket, case, crystal, movement, Bourdon tube, etc. are separately manufactured and in turn require separate assembly to produce the finished gauge. While that approach to gauge manufacture has over the years been regarded as satisfactory, the production cost associated therewith, discounting inflation, has essentially leveled off. That is, while some cost reducing improvements have been generated for individual components as, for example, to the gauge movement as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,055,085 to R. H. Wetterhorn, the cost of components by and large and therefore final gauge cost have generally stagnated. Despite recognition of the problem, a ready solution has not heretofore been known.